You may have noticed how people walking physically together tend to fall into step. It's particularly likely when people are having a conversation. Like other examples of unconscious mimicry – e.g. mirroring facial expressions – it's thought to be part of getting along socially.

The authors of the paper were actually trying to make this synchronisation possible over the phone to see if it enriched the users' experience. They devised a way to transmit the jolting of a caller's footsteps so that the other person felt them through their phone's vibrate function.

But in tests, 10 pairs of people trying the system were, on average, most synchronised when they were having an interactive conversation, and couldn't feel the other's steps. For 29 per cent of the time, their steps were in time, according to the researchers' definition.

Feeling the pounding of the other person's feet via the cellphones did improve how synchronised a pair's steps were when they were having a scripted conversation, or describing images down the line, though.

It seems that transmitting footsteps can help, but that other cues can be more powerful. One possibility is that the rhythm of our speech is used. Previous studies have shown links between the rhythm of someone's speech, and other people's own speech, movements and breathing.

The study was carried out by computer scientists Roderick Murray-Smith from the University of Glasgow and Bojan Musizza from the Institut Jozef Stefan in Slovenia; along with psychologists Simon Garrod and Melissa Jackson, both also at Glasgow, and Andrew Ramsay from the Hamilton Institute, Ireland.

Thursday, September 06, 2007

If Second Life were real

If you've experienced Second Life, this video will make you laugh. If you haven't, you'll realise that, while you can theoretically do anything and everything in the much-ballyhooed virtual world, that doesn't mean it will work smoothly.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Talking in numbers with your calculator

I'm sure everyone has tried this - writing words on a calculator by entering numbers and turning the screen upside down. One of my earliest memories of using a calculator is being shown 7734 and 58008 at the age of around eight.

Of course, back then the words 'hell' and 'boobs' were a lot more entertaining.

From reading this blog post, I've just discovered that there are 248 other English words you can write on a seven-segment segment display. The list was generated by searching for all possible combinations of the possible letters against a dictionary.

Friday, August 17, 2007

Knock Knock. Who's there?

"As the light changed from red to green to yellow and back to red again, I sat there thinking about life. Was it nothing more than a bunch of honking and yelling? Sometimes it seemed that way." Jack Handey

A joke is a uniquely human experience, or so we've always thought. Humour like Handey's draws on such a wealth of human experience, emotion and understanding that it's hard to imagine artificial intelligence systems (or some people) ever getting to grips with it.

Here's an example of the kind of joke they're talking about:Knock, KnockWho is there?DismayDismay who?Dismay not be a funny joke

Indeed. Recognising this as a joke is actually straightforward (for humans at least). What the team did is give a computer a list of similar sounding words or phrases then asked it to look for these examples in Knock Knock jokes. When it found one, it parsed the sentence to see if it made sense. If it did, the computer flagged it as a joke.

Fair enough. That looks like sound computer science but is it a huge breakthrough? The fact that this is being trumpeted as a significant step for artificial intelligence research is telling. What seems painfully clear is that 50 years after AI research began, these systems still have difficulty with tasks that humans tackle with ease.

That's something the University of Cincinnati (or at least the person who writes the press releases) obviously hasn't appreciated. The news release ends: "this research is a giant leap toward approaching the capability of the human mind".

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Balloonatic express

I'll admit this is a bit low-tech, but it seems too heroic not to mention. Kent Couch, a guy from Oregon, US, just flew 193 miles aboard a lawn chair attached to 105 large helium balloons.

Why, you ask?

"When you're a little kid and you're holding a helium balloon, it has to cross your mind," he told The Bend Bulletin.

It's hard to argue with that.

Couch took off with only a GPS receiver, some amateur instruments to measure his altitude and speed, and a few gallons of water as ballast. Friends and family followed his journey from the ground in a caravan.

Surprisingly, though, he's not the first to try such a stunt. Larry Walters (who was awarded an Honorable Mention by the Darwin Awards website for not dying during his stunt) performed a similar flight in 1982. Walter rose to an astonishing altitude of 3 miles aboard his homemade craft - dubbed Inspiration 1 - and was even spotted by a confused airplane pilot.

When asked by a local reporter why he'd embarked on the flight, Walters gave a similarly inspired answer. "A man can't just sit around," he said.

Friday, July 06, 2007

Physics-defying energy machine runs into 'technical difficulties'

About a year ago, an Irish start-up company called Steorn took out a full page ad in the Economist magazine, advertising a device that would produce "free, clean and constant energy".

In other words, a perpetual motion machine.

The company also issued a challenge to scientists, calling for "twelve of the most qualified and most cynical from the world’s scientific community to form an independent jury, test the technology in independent laboratories and publish their findings."

Steorn says this scientific validation process is underway, although nothing has been published so far. And so, crazy as the idea sounds, there was no way to prove or disprove the company's claims.

But, this week, the world was about to get its first glimpse of this earth-shattering new technology. Steorn had set up a "simplified version of their device" at Kinetica Museum in Spitalfields, London, for a 10-day public demonstration, which was also to be broadcast via a webcam.

Sadly, this dramatic demonstration has fallen flat. The device, a curious-looking collection of bits and bobs in a perspex box is just sitting there doing nothing.

"We are experiencing some technical difficulties with the demo unit in London", reads a message posted to the demo website. "Our initial assessment indicates that this is probably due to the intense heat from the camera lighting."

Hmmm. I think the fact that Steorn has worked so hard to get media attention rather than working to convince scientists by publishing details of their machine openly says a lot about its likely validity.

And, to be honest, their new excuse is hardly inspiring. If they can't work out how to turn the air conditioning on, what hope do they have of violating the second law of thermodynamics?

(The image above is of perpetual motion machine designed by George A. Bockler in 1660)

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Laughing bullets

The so-called "Gay Bomb" is far from the only bizarre non-lethal weapon that the Pentagon has considered. In fact, it's an area rich in wacky ideas, and I recently stumbled across another curious idea: Smart Non-Lethal Bullets. These would apparently leave their targets battered and bruised but also, oddly, laughing.

These bullets, developed under a 2002 project, would have a soft nose that collapsed upon impact. Instead of penetrating like a normal bullet, they would deliver a substantial (but non-lethal) impact and also burst open to release a chemical agent - proposals include laughing gas or malodorants.

"Essentially this non-lethal weapon will allow the military to "punch," slap and hit an individual repetitively from a distance and in a manner, which provides no injuries", claims the original proposal. The chemical payload should then either incapacitate a target or drive them away in a non-lethal fashion, it adds.

Two big advantages were claimed for these bullets. Firstly, that they would be safe over their entire range, compared to existing rounds, which can be hazardous at close quarters. Secondly, that they could be loaded into ordinary rifles instead of requiring specialised weapons.

$99,899 was awarded for the first phase of development, but the project never went any further. Perhaps because questions remain over whether it is possible for even soft shells to be safe at short ranges.

But, while the Smart Non-lethal Bullet may not have gone very far, the company behind the idea, Agentai, did better with their next proposal, the Rockets Assisted Safe Projectile (RASP). This is a rocket projectile designed to deliver "chemical agents that can further incapacitate or maintain the incapacitation of the targeted individual".

I've no idea whether these agents might include laughing gas or bad odours, but it certainly sounds like no laughing matter.David Hambling, New Scientist correspondent.

Thursday, May 03, 2007

Hacker worm makes music

Here's a video of a worm making music, with the help of some circuit bending humans. Circuit bending is all about creatively short circuiting electronics in toys, synthesisers video games or anything else to make new things possible. What could be more creative than using a worm to help?